I finally abused the yarn too much. Last night I was out drinking with the team and I had the project in a zippered bag. The yarn got caught in the zipper. My teammate was able to get it unstuck without breaking the yarn, but when I went to pay for the cab, I saw it was stuck again. It snapped this morning, since I don't have my teammate's patience. Oh well, I have to frog it anyway. I'll use that bit for the thumb.

Knitting is boring.

There's nothing that's really a challenge anymore. I'm working on a piece that's probably the slowest thing I've ever done. Mostly because I knit it up to the thumb and then frog it EVERY DAY. It's the reversible mittens from Homespun Handknit, where you're knitting a two color mitten, but you're also knitting the same pattern inverted at the same time, so you'll be able to turn the mitten inside out and have the exact negative. It's kinda clever, but it's a bitch to implement. First of all it's on 1s in fingering weight, so there are more stitches than my usual gloves/mittens. Then I had to get used to purling in the round, with my left hand. (I'm a thrower - English knitter; I knit Continental fine, from doing stranded colorwork, but I've rarely had occasion to purl.) On top of that you have to make sure the floats are carried between the two layers, and that you're knitting the pattern correctly on both layers. This does not make for "zen"/commuter knitting.

The first time I frogged it was because I wasn't happy with my tension and my increases were sloppy. The second time I seemed to have miscounted the increase row. This time there are two lattice stitches knitted in the wrong color on the light side, and one on the dark. Feh! (Yes, I know I can just duplicate stitch them in later, but that would be cheating, wouldn't it?)

The thing is, the pattern isn't difficult; I'm just not paying attention well enough. (No matter how complicated a knitting pattern is, it's basically the same stitch mechanism as your average garter-stitch, skittle-puke, fake-fur scarf.) I can easily see myself getting bored before I get to the other mitten.

The one good thing is that my spinning has held up rather well through all of the frogging and abuse. I spun a good yarn for this. The light yarn is a little thinner than the dark, but it holds its own.

Quote of the Day:
I know I'm going to die alone and my cats are going to feed on my decaying corpse for weeks until the stench alerts the neighbors. I'm fine with it. And if no one shows up at my funeral, then I will not have made anyone cry.

One of these days I'm going to have to figure out just how fast I spindle. It seems to me that I'm pretty productive when I want to be. I'll have to just spin for an hour and skein it off/measure it.

I'm mortified that I have a sun burn. I rarely, if ever, burn. My face is peeling & I feel silly. Mind you that I was wearing SPF 30 and a hat the entire time I was out in the sun this weekend. Go figure. My arms & shoulders aren't burned, just my face. At least it doesn't hurt.

I just won a contest. Where was my luck when the $290M lottery was going? Ah well, beggars can't be choosers.

I'm exhausted.

I just did a 2 day volleyball clinic and it kicked my ass. I haven't trained that hard in decades. About a third of the group didn't come back for the second day, they were so tired. But it was good. And if I could do that, for 2 days on the beach, in the hot sun, without collapsing, it just proves that I'm not training hard enough on my runs, cuz I'm never that tired. I was so tired I was hallucinating.

There were so many things I was meaning to do this weekend, but I kept falling asleep. I did manage to ply off what was on my spindle. I've been doing laceweight lately, more than doubling my usual yardage output per spindle. Unfortunately, it now takes me 2.5 hours to ply it off too. But it's nice yarn. Maybe I'll spin enough for a shawl. I'd rather do that on the wheel, but my driveband broke. I have to make a new one. (Or just use the other wheel, duh.)

yawn!

Oh - and I did make that phone call. The store was busy so we couldn't chat, but now we both have each other's number, so I imagine I'll get a call back at some point.

When in doubt, Google:

Blacks during the Holocaust
... camp system. Lionel Romney, a sailor in the US Merchant Marine, was
imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Jean Marcel ...
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005479

OSS
... Lionel Romney, Negro fireman, US Merchant Marine, 'SS Makis' sunk off Pantelleria 17 June 1940, captured by Italians and interned eventually in Mauthausen. ...
http://www.udt-seal.org/oss.html

I dragged the bike out for he first time this year. Cleaned off the cobwebs (literally), cleaned the chain, etc. and rode around for 2 hours. I just didn't feel like running yesterday. I guess the midnight screening of Spiderman 2 was too much for me in my old age. Either that or the fact that there was a cherry moon. I noticed it at 2:40 am, and had to go out every 10 minutes thereafter too see what color it'd darkened to ... all of the way to its setting. It was worth it I guess.

Well, anyway. I rode around for a while, then decided to swing by the local homebrew shop to see if they'd gotten the bottle washers in yet. They had. I like my local shop (the only one in the city, in fact) because the sales staff is hot. It's located near my HS and the people who work there are the same types I used to be attracted to in HS. It reminds me of my youth. So ... long story short, I was chatting with the cashier about biking, and brewing, and beer ... and I got the digits! I didn't even ask. I'm s'posed to call if I want to do an upstate bike trip. I can't get excited about it because I believe there's a significant other in the wings. But I've always thought this particular salesperson was hot. But I would never have the guts to make the first move. (Not that any move was made - but I never would have thought to suggest that we go biking together. I just brought up the idea that it would make a good outing; the bike trails are close to the brewery.) So that was kinda cool. As I was leaving I kept wondering "Did I think what just happened happen?"

Needless to say, I haven't called yet. Aren't you supposed to give it a certain number of days? And anyway, all I'm going to say is that I don't have a free weekend until the 24th; if that's cool, then pencil it in. It would seem over eager to call immediately just to say that. I'll call tomorrow. (It's on my calendar.)

After all that excitement, I had a funeral last night. It was REALLY long, but I liked the guy, so I couldn't mind. It's shitty that you don't learn the cool things about people until they're gone. I learned earlier this year that one of the family friends was a weaver. I never knew he wove. Never knew he used to own a lumber company either. The guy whose funeral was last night was my neighbor. He was 91. He always used to try to race me in the winter mornings when it snowed. Who ever got out first would shovel for both houses. You know damn well I made it my business to get up first. Anyway, I didn't know he liked languages. I knew he spoke Dutch, but I didn't know about Spanish, Papiamento, Italian, & German. And the latter two he learned in a concentration camp in Austria (Mauthausen). The weird thing is, he was black - a St. Maarten native. He was in the Dutch Merchant Marines and his ship was mined, that's how he got captured. He was imprisoned for 4 years. Why do you never hear about black people in the concentration camps? In all my life I've never heard of such a thing, and I've watched German documentaries, movies, American films, Hungarian films on the subject. He said there were a lot of North Africans there too. They showed a small film of him discussing the experience at the funeral. He would imitate the German guards and laugh. (Funny, with his accent, I understood his German and Italian better than his English.) They would refer to him as the Moor, not realizing he understood most of what they were saying. Every morning they would come in and shout Wer verstorben? (Who's dead?) to ascertain who'd died during the night. And every day they'd call out someone's number and that person never came back. The elderly were killed right away, but the younger folks worked in a factory. The tape was the first time he'd ever discussed his experiences - 40 years after.

You never know who the person is next to you.